Ms Baldwin – who last month finished her two-and-a-half year term as Penn State University’s general counsel – was cited several times in a report issued by former FBI director Louis Freeh for mishandling issues in the case, which involved allegations of child sexual abuse against Sandusky in the late 1990s.

‘Incompetence’

According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Ms Baldwin did not seek an expert to lead the university through the criminal investigation or internal investigation, and also downplayed the significance of the grand jury investigation.
In addition, Corporate Counsel magazine reports that Mr Freeh’s ‘damning’ 247-page report said that the legal advice provided at Penn State between 1998 and 2011 was ‘seriously deficient’.
Many involved in the legal sector agreed that the Freeh report reflected badly on Ms Baldwin. ‘Most of it is incompetence, not malevolence,’ Duquesne University law professor Bruce Ledewitz told the Post-Gazette.

Child abuse

Sandusky was convicted of multiple counts of child abuse in June, but the Freeh report is expected to be heavily used in forthcoming civil litigation. Corporate Counsel also suggests that university law departments will have to reassess their general counsel’s obligations in light of the report.
‘It's not uncommon for general counsel in these situations to be caught in the middle,’ says Stephen Hirschfeld, a founding partner at San Francisco-based law firm Curiale Hirschfeld Kraemer, who specialises in employment law and internal investigations at universities. ‘They feel a great loyalty to the president, because that's their day-to-day client, but their real duty of loyalty and ethical obligations are to the institution, not to an individual.’
Ada Meloy, general counsel of American Council on Education added: ‘The report is something that virtually any college or university counsel could read and learn from. It provides insights into relationships between counsel, the administration, and the board that can be instructive.’

Debate over facts

Ms Baldwin’s lawyer Charles De Monaco of Pittsburgh law firm Fox Rothschild, released a statement saying it would be ‘inappropriate’ to comment directly on the report. However, he maintained that his client had co-operated fully with the inquiry, and that  the report ‘is factually inaccurate as it relates to Ms Baldwin, and no-one should draw conclusions until all the facts are known’.